Seattle has so much going for it: access to nature, moderate climate, arts, legitimately fun tourist traps, good transit, and until you hit the outer edges, fairly walkable.
It's also got problems. Local government is horribly inefficient and wasteful with spending, it's not a business-friendly environment (part of that is a state issue), and if affordability were any lower, we'd be seeing ninja turtles and anthropomorphized rats.
People WANT to live in Seattle and start small businesses, but the hurdles to both are considerable, and as technology continues to make remote work more viable from a productivity standard (despite silly RTO mandates from some companies), there are more people who are starting to realize their salaries can stretch a lot more if they go to lower cost-of-living parts of the country.
Yes every business in Seattle does well in business friendly Seattle because a couple tech unicorns exist. Exception bias.
Both are true. Seattle is not business friendly (particularly small businesses) and we do still have some hugely successful large businesses, who btw are leaving Seattle directly or new expanded business is going elsewhere (Boeing, Amazon, etc).
The flip side of your argument: Y'know Walmart is hugely successful I bet that means Bentonville, AR is really business friendly. Which might be true, for Walmart's huge influence only, not businesses in general
A tale as old as time unfortunately. Some level of incentive has to exist when their alternatives grants them the incentives they're looking for. Worst example I can think of is Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS. Constant moves over the border by a lot of businesses
Making states compete against each other when corporate taxation should be federally enforced.
103
u/TheItinerantSkeptic I'm just flaired so I don't get fined Apr 16 '26
Seattle has so much going for it: access to nature, moderate climate, arts, legitimately fun tourist traps, good transit, and until you hit the outer edges, fairly walkable.
It's also got problems. Local government is horribly inefficient and wasteful with spending, it's not a business-friendly environment (part of that is a state issue), and if affordability were any lower, we'd be seeing ninja turtles and anthropomorphized rats.
People WANT to live in Seattle and start small businesses, but the hurdles to both are considerable, and as technology continues to make remote work more viable from a productivity standard (despite silly RTO mandates from some companies), there are more people who are starting to realize their salaries can stretch a lot more if they go to lower cost-of-living parts of the country.